


Planet of Sick Beats and Little Cubes

by Anonymous



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-06-10 13:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6958360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Space exploration AU. The illustrious astronaut Jade Harley encounters a cute and powerful deity on a distant star. Earnest hijinks and soil sample collection ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Planet of Sick Beats and Little Cubes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Confection](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Confection/gifts).



Jade had been thrilled when she got the interstellar space exploration assignment. There had been so many qualified candidates, but she had been the most qualified! She had been very excited when the ship took off, and when it cleared Earth’s atmosphere, jettisoning its first set of atmospheric propulsion systems in favor of the second set of interstellar propulsion. She had been excited too, when the ship dropped out of hypertravel, and she had been the first human to see a whole new set of stars.

She had been only a little worried when alarms started blaring and some unknown malfunction caused the whole ship to start to shake. Only a little worried. But it had been kind of exciting to make that emergency landing on a wholly uncharted planet. And it was a very pretty celestial body (and so tiny!).

As she exited the ship, (spacesuit and helmet firmly on, of course, Jade Harley was not one to muck around with an unknown planet and its wholly unknown atmosphere, no matter what the readout in her malfunctioning ship said) she paused for a brief moment to take in her surroundings. The planet was pink - pink moss, pink grass, pinkish rivers. The only thing that wasn’t pink were jutting rock formations, a stark white against the cotton-candy landscape. Little square spires and outcroppings, like pyrite cubes on Earth. It was altogether very cute. Jade wanted to explore it, but she really should do repairs immediately. She even had her reminder strings on, to do repairs immediately if needed, although she couldn’t see them currently under her space suit. Mission Control would get on her if they found out that she’d wandered off to explore without doing repairs first.

She set to work. It was just some crossed wires. Could have been catastrophic, but was pretty easy to fix since she’d caught it. A little rewiring, a little soldering, nothing too bad. Hopefully.

She finished repairs, but returned to the cockpit to leave herself a reminder to double check everything before she tried to leave the planet. She didn’t want to forget something like that while she was busy exploring.

Jade set off in the planetary rover. North seemed like a good direction. Why not? There seemed to be more white stone cubes in that direction. Probably something else over that way, some nice stuff or a few things. Space cubes wouldn’t lie about the promise of stuff.

Jade traversed the empty planet in the compact rover. The planet was very empty, very lonely. Jade was lonely, too, sometimes. It was part of why she’d wanted on the space mission. She felt out of place (out of time?) on Earth. Isolated. She’d told this to one of her friends on Earth - she had friends, just she seemed always to be out of synch with everyone - and he hadn’t understood, although he’d tried to be nice about it. He couldn’t figure out why she wanted to go to space if she felt alone. He said that would make her more alone. Which was kind of true, she guessed? But maybe she’d meet some cool people in space! At the very least some interesting rocks.

As she drove on, the cubical outgrowths started to go more vertical, and then horizontal, and then both at the same time, resolving themselves into a building looking structure, vast and sprawling. Jade drove as far as she could before parking and exiting the rover. She was going to enter the building. It looked super abandoned, so she figured she was safe, but she took one of the heaviest wrenches from the tool set, just in case. She’d seen the movies, she wasn’t a fool. If only NASA had let her bring her rifle.

Dust motes spread out through the air inside the corridors of the abandoned complex, as Jade’s feet kicked up the stillness inside. She wondered when was the last time someone had walked through the halls. Shafts of sunlight illuminated the interior, pouring in through holes in the ceiling. A long time, Jade reckoned.

It was a little beautiful, and a little sad, how the buildings were left after the people had gone. Jade could still see their artwork and murals decorating the walls. They’d left something behind, wherever they’d gone. Jade reached out to touch one of the frescos, kicking up even more dust. Of course her helmet was on, but something primordial in the back of her brain still triggered a sneeze response, seeing all those particulates floating around.

“Hey babe! What are you doing all the way out here in the cat’s-tail end of space?

Jade whipped around, raising the wrench in warning, the tail end of her sneeze definitely not turning into a scream. No-siree, no such thing from Jade Harley.

“Sup?”

Jade raised the wrench some more, but not to attack, just to try and shield her face. The speaker was strobing, like staring into the sun, if Earth’s sun had been unable to decide whether it wanted to be green or orange. Their waving didn’t help things, the movement just exacerbating the pulsating light they gave off.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Jade was sure Mission Control had given her protocol for First Contact, but fuck if she could remember it. Stammering, blunt questions were probably fine, too.

“Oh you know, just Davepeta, the tiny, but oft-cited god/dess of all things rad. Who are you, beautiful space explorer?”

‘Rad’ seemed like an odd bit of Earth slang for an interstellar god/dess to know, Jade thought, but cool all the same. No one could be hostile while using the word.

“I’m Jade! Nice to meet you.” Jade lowered the wrench, eyes adjusting, and extended her other hand. Davepeta gave her a hi-five. Jade nodded. That was good too. Slowly, something dawned on her.

“Wait, what exactly, constitutes all things rad? Are you like an ur-god/dess? Or is radicallness something more specific? I need to document this, for science.”

“Oh you know, love, time, sick rhymes. The impurrtant things in all of your nine lives.”

“Of course.” Jade paused, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the literally otherworldly strobing light effect. They didn’t really, so she just sort of squinted. “I like your horns.”

“Thank you!”

“And your wings”

“Thanks!”

“Sunglasses are good, too.” Jade wondered if they needed them in order to cope with their own light.

Davepeta pulled the sunglasses down slightly on their face, in order to give Jade a good eyebrow waggle.

“What does it mean to be the god/dess of love, time, and sick rhymes, exactly?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Aw, come on. Play along.”

Davepeta grinned. “Well, I could talk about myself fur hours, if that’s really what you’re wanting. Since you insisted. I get people to kick up all their dope and radical feelings, show them how to cope with a sick beat, and you know all that stuff moves along the sliding scale of time - pining, love, heartsickness, etc. etc."

“No one's here though, it looks like, to have sick feelings. Doesn’t it get lonely?”

Davepeta fidgeted briefly with their claws, and stretched their wings out to their full extension before letting them drop back down to their sides.

“Wow. Cold opener there. Sometimes. But efuryne needed to leave.”

Jade looked around at the landscape. It was very pretty, idyllic even. For a brief second she wondered why someone would leave, before remembering that she had left Earth behind too, watching from her ship as the planet shrunk to a blue pinpoint. It had been very pretty too. Sometimes even reaching idyllic.

“Did they leave to explore?”

“Some of them did. Mostly they grew too big for this place. The god/dess of sick rhymes can only get them so far, and then they’ve got to go their own way. You know, make their own sick rhymes. You gotta see new stuff and do new things to keep the beats from kitten too stale.” Davepeta glanced around at the overgrown buildings. “Sometimes I think about leaving too. I guess I could work on my own rhymes, although they’re already perfect, since that is my godly realm and all.

“Why don't you leave?” Jade asked, pressing them.

Davepeta didn't answer immediately. The feathers along the edges of their wings ruffled slightly, a minute movement, but still enough for Jade to see.

“Why did you want to visit to space, Jade?”

“You know, I asked my question first.”

“Please?”

“Oh, it just seemed like the thing to do at the time!” Jade briefly took her eyes away from the carnival of color that was Davepeta to look up at the stars. “I’ve always liked space. Liked the stars.” Jade kept her gaze fixed on a distant star. Maybe she'd visit that one next. She laughed a little. “You know it's funny, but when I was little I used to wonder if when I was looking at stars there was someone else up there looking back. Not that they could see me, of course. If I couldn't see them they probably couldn't see me.” Jade looked back at Davepeta, who unless they had the godly omnipotence to see Earth from here, had certainly never looked back at her.

“Anyways, your turn!”

“Oh, I just felt like staying.” Evasive bird-cat person. Jade huffed, feeling a little cheated. Her helmet clouded slightly with the burst of air.

“All your sighing would probably be more effective, and make my kitty-bird heart so much more remorseful if your head wasn’t stuck behind that helmet.”

Jade wasn’t about to take off her space-suit’s helmet. She loved things like oxygen and being alive.

“Well then I guess I’ll just have to huff and puff to no avail! I’m keeping the helmet on.”

“You purrobably won’t die.”

Jade paused. “How sure is that purro -PROBably won’t?”

Davepeta grinned. “Definitely probably.”

“Oh, well you can’t beat definitely probably. Still, I think I’ll keep my helmet on, for just a bit more. Until I leave.”

Davepeta’s smile didn’t drop a bit. How could it, with those cute little fangs holding it up?

“No prob. No problem. Anyways, besides coming here to talk to a smoking hot god/dess, why did you journey so far into the cold expanse of space?” Jade was having a little trouble keeping up with Davepeta’s emotional shifts from jokey self-adoration, earnest self-adoration, and fear of the void, but that was okay. She’d catch up eventually.

“Well, besides chatting up smoking hot deities, I’m mainly out here to look at some cool rocks. Collect some cool rocks. Categorize some cool rocks. Y’know.”

Jade couldn’t quite be sure behind the shades, but she was fairly certain Davepeta’s eyes had grown wide.

“Oh, I am the supreme ruler of cool rocks!”

“Not the god/dess of them?”

“Not that’s somebody else.” Davepeta flourished their wings and brushed past Jade, catching her and as they passed. “Let me show you my mounds of cool rocks, though!”

Davepeta led her through the abandoned city, pointing out the best rooftops to stand dramatically on, the best corners for naps, explaining all the murals and frescos (many done in part by themselves). Jade took soil samples, pried up some of the small cubes, and documented the wall art (“no, don’t photograph that one, I did much better at expurressionism on the one just down this alleyway, actually I mean if you want, why not photograph both?” “Make sure you really capture the color in this one, I mean really capture it. I worked really hard on it, but not, y'know too hard.”).

Davepeta sat next to Jade in the rover as they returned to the ship. It was a little cramped, having been built just for a one-astronaut mission, but Jade didn’t mind the wings behind her head. Davepeta was showing off their beat-boxing skills. Kept the drive back entertaining.

They returned to the ship, and Davepeta helped Jade unload the rover. Jade had collected all the rocks that could fit in the allocated storage space on the ship. Tons of tiny and not-so-tiny moon cubes to be brought back to Earth and analyzed and given as gifts to visiting dignitaries. ‘In the name of friendship, we gift you with this super space cube,’ was probably what the president would say.

“Welp,” Jade started awkwardly. Mission directives had been completed, and had now shifted to leaving and heading to the next stop. Mission control would be able to see in the logs how long she’d lollygagged. Mission control had really fucked up, prioritizing rocks over alien life. Davepeta would be all alone again. She would be all alone again too.

“I’d better, uh, be going.”

Davepeta nodded, expression inscrutable behind their shades.

“It was nice to meet you!”

“Yeah,” Davepeta said softly, wings ruffling.

Jade sighed, clouding up the front of her helmet again. Davepeta laughed, their wings no longer fidgeting.

“Before you go, I will impart some godly wisdom on you.”

Jade was glad the tension had been broken, and they weren’t leaving on bad terms. Davepeta had rallied, their voice back to an upbeat tenor.

“Okay, are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Do not fly straight through a sun.”

Jad laughed. “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Avoid black holes.”

“Good to know. I never would have suspected not to do that.”

“If you see a cool (but less cool than me) goddess who has more of a pink and green thing going on than an orange and green one, she is supepurr cute and smoochable, and also sort of me, so you should stop and say hi to her. Oh! Then there’s another cool goddess (still less cool than me), who’s all kind of glowy pink. She’ll probably try and woo you though, just fyi.”

It took a minute for Jade to wade through the out-loud mushed-together pronunciation of the letters “F” “Y” “I,” but by the time she’d puzzled it out, she was pretty sure that she was already being wooed, what with all those eyebrow wagglings, and Davepeta just shot her double finger pistols and wink? But she was down to be wooed some more.

“Last piece of godly wisdom.” Davepeta was rotating their finger-guns left and right rapidly. Very unsafe finger-gun handling. They were liable to take out someone’s eye.

“Yeah?”

“You should really take your helmet off.” The bravado had dropped away from their voice, all gentleness and no sarcasm. With only the slightest hesitancy, a brief second between her brain agreeing and her hands catching up, Jade opened the seals on her helmet, and pulled it off her head.

Everything was fine. No exploding heads or eyes shooting out of her skull. Pluses, all around. And then, the hugest plus of them all - Davepeta leaned forward, and kissed her.

Davepeta pulled away, and Jade struggled for something to say that would culminate the experience.

“Nice!” She felt her face flushing.

“Nice.” Davepeta graced her with another set of double finger pistols.

It had been nice, that’s for sure, but now it was even more awkward to leave. How could she make a graceful exit now?

“Well, it’s been great, bye!” She tripped a little on a space cube as she turned around to head to the cockpit, but mostly recovered. She could hear Davepeta laughing as they exited the ship to float outside and wave.

Jade strapped herself into her seat. She was still blushing. She couldn’t wait to tell mission control about this. Meeting Davepeta in general, not the kiss in particular. She wouldn’t tell Mission Control about that. Not in the official logs, at least.

That one shouty comm guy would probably flip his shit. That’d be fun. She hadn’t really expected to make a friend in the middle of space. Hoped maybe, but not expected. That’d been fun too.

As she kicked off the shuttle’s takeoff protocol, she felt she was forgetting something. She could see all her reminders on her fingers now that she’d taken off her suit, but none of them triggered anything.

She looked through the ship’s viewport to see if she could spot whatever the forgotten thing was outside. Nothing. Just one last look at the cubed landscape.

Jade turned her head away from the viewport, and there it was, inside the ship rather than outside of it, that bright orange-green burning, just out of the corner of her eyes. She turned her head some more.

Davepeta was just sort of hovering there, fingers dangerously close to mashing a whole board’s worth of buttons.

“Don’t.” Jade cautioned.

“Okay!” Davepeta pulled back their hands. Jade exhaled slowly, and finished off the remaining takeoff protocols, waiting for the gentle falling away feeling as the ship pulled out of the atmosphere.

“So…” Jade started, turning more fully to look at Davepeta as the ship’s autopilot took over.

“So.” Davepeta repeated.

“You coming along then?”

“I suppose so!” Davepeta moved in closer to Jade, and pointed out the viewport, at a distant, glimmering speck in the darkness. “You know that star is the closest star to my planet, but I’ve never jumped there. I always go past it.”

“You mean that one?” Jade pointed too.

“Yeah.” Davepeta gave a small sigh, and Jade made up her mind.

Jade altered the ship's coordinates, and set a new course for that not-so-distant star.


End file.
